Okay, told to post this here, from General Chatter.
Okay, so, it's been awhile since I've played a cleric. A buddy of mine made one up, and chose the domains Good and Healing. He says that, since both of those grant the cleric the ability to cast those kind of spells at +1 caster level, it means that he can cast Cure Moderate Wounds, a 2nd level healing spell, at 1st level.
Is he right, or does he still have to wait until he can cast 2nd level spells?

Riftwalker

12-30-2008, 03:33 AM

Short answer: he has to wait until he can cast 2nd level spells.

Long answer: there seems to be some confusion between the caster level of the player and the level of the spell.

The Good domain grants +1 caster level to Good spells, i.e., those with the [Good] descriptor, such as Magic Circle Against Evil.
The Healing domain grants +1 caster level to healing spells, i.e., those in the Conjuration (Healing) school, such as Cure Light Wounds.

Cure Light Wounds does not have the [Good] descriptor, so if he cast it, he would only be getting +1 to his caster level, not +2.

But what does getting +1 to his caster level mean? It means that he casts Cure Light Wounds as a caster one level higher than he is. It does not mean that the spell Cure Light Wounds is one level higher (i.e., a second level spell.) And even if it did, that would not make it equivalent to Cure Moderate Wounds.

Cure Light Wounds heals the target of 1d8 + 1 point per caster level (maximum +5). So a level 1 cleric without the Healing domain would heal the target of 1d8 + 1 points of damage. And your friend the cleric at level 1 with the Healing domain would instead heal 1d8 + 2 points of damage.

Hope that helps.

Drizzit red

02-11-2009, 04:03 PM

Rift nailed that one right on. My younger players had this same issue understanding the rules. It took me a while to get them to understand what it meant.

Valdar

02-12-2009, 02:07 PM

Yeah, it's like they should have looked up "Level" in a thesaurus... (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html)

nijineko

02-13-2009, 12:28 PM

*chuckle* =D nice one.

Riftwalker

02-13-2009, 03:57 PM

Yeah, it's like they should have looked up "Level" in a thesaurus... (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html)